Shopping In Guangzhou

Historically Guangzhou has been an important port for Chinese foreign trade, a business center of South China area. For the last fifty years since the People's Republic of China was founded, the commerce in Guangzhou has developed rapidly and tremendous changes have taken place. It has become the one of the major industries in national economy, and plays an important role in socialist construction and market economy development.

For the past fifty years, the total retail turnover of social consumer products in Guangzhou has increased almost 512 times, from RMB 177 million to RMB 90.457 billion in 1998, with an average annual increase rate of 13.57%. In 1998, the total retail turnover of social consumer products in Guangzhou ranked the 3rd among the big cities in China, just a bit behind the one in Shanghai and Beijing. The increased value of trading and catering industries is RMB 17.569 billion, which is 9.54% of the national output value of the city, ranking the 4th among all kinds of national economies.

Guangzhou also experienced a tortuous history in commercial development. In the past, the operation modes in commerce were rather simple. Besides those large comprehensive department stores, the specialty stores were unitary, like sugar, cigarette and wine store, groceries, hardware stores, stores of articles of daily use, etc.. With the further development of the socialist market economy, the operation patterns of commerce have gradually become multifunctional and multi-level, and the great changes have taken place in the organization of the enterprises.